Saturday, October 31, 2015

Generally I do my own assembly of the computers I use. Starting in 1989 I had a succession of computer that I upgraded with bit and pieces over the years. One thing I learned is to do is store my creative stuff on multiple hard drives along with off-line backups. First Floppies, then CDs, USB Flash Drives and now I added a 100 GB of Google Drive into the mix.

Well last week the hard drive where I store all my programs died. I tweak my setup to work the way I want it to work so I hate when this happens. I have to reinstall everything and dig out serial numbers and passwords and so forth and so on. The only silver lining is that my working folders are on a separate hard drive and my games are on a third hard drive. And with Steam I already have everything downloaded so the first time I run a game it will install what it needs and I am off playing!

Well I decided this was a good time to do the upgrade to Windows 10. It was quick and easy. Has the fastest boot time I seen of any windows version to date. It also seems to be able to do this to the point where it actually connected to the network. Windows 7 got you to the login quickly but sometime it took a few minutes to finalize your network connection.

All my old drivers work including some off-beat one I use for my Wacom Tablet and 3D Mouse. For those who are interested the Table I use when I do maps and want to draw rivers, coasts, and roads. It has absolute positioning so it wrote more like a pen on paper than a mouse on a screen. The 3D mouse I use for when I run Orbiter Space Simulator or the Kerbal Space Program. I have a Logitech Joystic for attitude control. I use the 3D mouse for translation as it has not only up and down, left and right, but push in and pull out. (And twist, and it tilts four ways but I don't normally use those).

One thing I really liked about Windows 10 is that you can have two different images for dual monitors. I have one normal monitor. The other monitor is rotated 90 degrees into portrait mode. I can write or edit and see a full page at a time.

Here what the new background looks like.

What you do is copy all the images you want to C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Windows
Do a multi-select by selecting one of the images and then select the other while holding down the CTRL key.
Then right click and select Set as desktop Background.
Then will have multiple images for multiple monitors.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

On October 3rd I ran a Fantasy Age adventure for my friends Tim, and Dan. Another friend unfortunately wasn't able to make it due to being sick. The general idea is that we get together about once a month to play RPGs and board games face to face. This time it was my turn and after talking about it, I agreed to run a Fantasy Age adventure.

Fantasy Age is intriguing to use as we are looking at an alternative to GURPS. Because Fantasy Age uses a 3d6 roll high system and has a moderate level of detail for combat and character, we have been giving it and Dragon Age a whirl. One nice thing about Fantasy Age/Dragon Age is how they handle "criticals". When you roll you use two dice of one color and one dice of another color. That third dice is called a stunt dice. If you roll a success and two of the three dice numbers match, then you are eligable for stunts. Stunts can do extra damage, allow for increase effects, and a number of other benefits. Stunts are prices in stunt points. The number of stunt points you get is based on the number rolled on the stunt die.

Outside of this the system has a lot of similarity with playing with 3.X/d20/Pathfinder with 3d6 and starting at 3rd level. But where d20 provides options through feats, in Fantasy Age it is the stunts that mixes things up. After playing it a couple of times, I find myself liking it. The cost in game play is limited to looking up costs on a short table. It adds a lot of unpredictability and tactics without complicating the rest of the system.

So now I have to prepare an adventure. I elect to keep it simple and run a dungeon underneath the City State of the Invincible Overlord. The hook as such is that during a recent revolt an entrance to a forgotten sanctum of a powerful mage was uncovered by the crash of a blue dragon. The plan is to start out the players at the famous Seahawk Tavern on Regal Street, subject them to a riot/tavern brawl, discover a map clue to the sanctum, have the dragon crash, and they find the entrance. A bit heavy handed but I felt since this was a one-shot, for now, it was a decent way to get the party to the entrance of the dungeon.

This series of posts is about my efforts to create the dungeon.

First off the concept. My view is that dungeons are like any other locales in having a history and a reason for being. In this case, the dungeon was the sanctum of a mage (think 16th level) from two centuries ago. That it has been looted in the past but not completely. What left is the equivalent of a 1st level dungeon for Fantasy Age.

The mage, Aldrous was a member of the Guild of Arcane Lord in City-State and an opponent of the Guild leader Salm-Lorin who eventually became an Overlord of the City-State. Salm-Lorin is known to history as the Tyrant and his reign was looked on as a dark period in City-State's history. The consequence for the dungeon that part of Aldrous' preparations for his final confrontation, which he lost, was sealing the entrance so it couldn't be found except by him.

However I decided the dungeon would have a second entrance to the sewers which was the reason it was able to be looted in the intervening years. The sewers always been a big part of my City-State campaigns so I figured they should be incorporated.

With that in mind I decided the Dungeon will be in two parts. One would be an abandoned barracks area connected to the basement entrance and that it would be mostly stocked with vermin. The back half with the sewer entrance was the actual sanctum of the mage.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.